Rich & Jen Schmitt

Rich Schmitt is president of Schmitt Consulting Group Inc., a management consulting firm focused on distribution and manufacturing clients for pricing, consulting seminars and profit improvement. He is co-owner, and Jennifer Schmitt is VP/GM, of Schmitt ProfiTools Inc. (SPI), which provides web storefronts and handheld tools, print catalog software, content creation and services, and pricing management and analysis. Visit their company website at www.go-spi.com. Rich Schmitt can be reached directly at [email protected] and Jen Schmitt can be reached directly at [email protected].

Business Management

Taking the Pulse of Your Customers

Make an effort to understand your customers’ needs and build operational best practices to fulfill those needs.

February 3, 2020

Rich & Jen Schmitt

Being busy in a successful operation is quite different from being busy due to days of screw-ups and fire drills. There still seem to be some wholesalers who are surprised and feel the need to celebrate when they can ship a standard stock order — complete, without errors and delivered as promised.

Business Management

Great Leaders + Great People = Great Company

Begin with a critical review of your company, your people and your processes.

November 29, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

As we enter 2020, we hope you will forgive a little walk down memory lane for us. As we write this, almost exactly 15 years ago, Rich and his dad (Grandpa Joe Schmitt) were writing their last column together.

Business Management

Evaluating Your Branch

A walkthrough list to establish best practices for your branch.

November 5, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

In September, we mentioned a previous column that included a branch walkthrough list. Every once in a while, we seem to strike a chord and get a good number of requests for additional information.

Business Management

Best Practices and Checklists

A branch readiness checklist will ensure that your mission-critical processes are performed the same all the time at each location.

October 8, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

This month we want to encourage readers to step back and take a “customer-eyes” look at their customer-facing facilities and customer friendliness.

Business Management

Customer Contact Basics

Tips to get in touch with your current and prospective clients.

September 4, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

As we come to the middle of the busy season for many wholesalers, our take is that 2019 is shaping up to be a pretty good year across the country.

Business Management

Using Demographic Data, Business Analytics Effectively

Many of the business trends we will face in the future are reasonably evident as we study the demographics of the situation.

August 8, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

We recently returned from this year’s Southern Wholesaler’s Association (SWA) meeting held on Amelia Island in Florida. As always, the SWA meeting was well-attended and included an excellent program with many opportunities for business, social and family activities.

Business Management

Customer Catalogs

Don’t put all your eggs into the e-commerce basket; the majority of your business does not come from the Internet.

July 3, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

Creating a good webstore is a complicated process. It’s not as messy as managing a top-notch salesforce, maintaining brick-and-mortar locations with fast, efficient product delivery, establishing customer relationships and building effective marketing programs that attract and retain profitable customers.

Business Management

Insights into P21 and Eclipse Software

An overview of Epicor’s user’s conference and its software offerings for distributors.

June 5, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

In April, Jen attended Epicor Software Corp.’s Insights user conference as the company’s guest at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Due to Epicor’s great hospitality, Jen is already campaigning with Rich to attend in his place again next year.

Business management

Contractors of the Future

The coming generation will be more transactional, better informed and more demanding of their wholesaler vendors.

May 6, 2019

Rich & Jen Schmitt

We all have heard some variation of the sentence, “I hear what you’re saying about how much you did for me yesterday, but what have you done for me today.” It’s been around for years. We think the future will be more like, “What have you done for me on this item on this order.”